


The End

by Svartalfur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-27
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Svartalfur/pseuds/Svartalfur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When all is said and done, there's one thing left for Harry to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The End

_That wand's more trouble than it's worth," said Harry, "and quite honestly," he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime."_

Before he could rest, though, there was one thing left for him to do.

Fawkes' feather surely held some of the phoenix's healing power, for Harry's strength returned to him the moment he waved his old wand. Snape's memories danced through the office, wisps of silver, a shimmering galaxy against the darkness of the antique paintings, nearly invisible in the rays of the early morning sun.

Harry stoppered the flask and turned to go.

"What are you up to, mate?" Ron asked, but Hermione shook her head.

"See you later," she said, smiling, and whispered something into Ron's ear. Ron grinned and followed her out the door, giving Harry the thumbs-up before vanishing on the spiral staircase.

Putting the Elder Wand next to his old wand up his sleeve, Harry wrapped his father's Cloak around himself and - with a last look back at Dumbledore twinkling merrily from his frame - left the office. The lopsided gargoyle at the bottom of the stairs groaned when Harry clambered over it. Harry touched it with his wand. "Reparo."

Stone grated on stone when the statue righted itself and skidded over the floor back to its former place at the entrance to the Headmaster's tower. "Password?" it asked.

"Severus Snape," Harry answered.

There were still people in the Great Hall, but all noise had died down. Harry's heart ached when he saw Mrs Weasley asleep in her husband's arms and George holding Fred's hand, his eyes directed at the ceiling where the sun was still rising. The Malfoys' hair glittered like silver steel wool. When Harry's eyes fell on their huddled forms, he didn't feel the old rage any more. Sadness and pity was all that was left. He had come to accept death, so it was only just to accept the living as well.

Ginny, Neville and Luna were talking on the front steps. Their soft voices followed Harry on his way to the Whomping Willow. The tree stood motionless, split in two by a stray curse. Harry touched the trunk with both his hands, tracing the wooden gash with tender strokes. "Reparo," he said, tapping it with his wand as an afterthought.

The deep and grinding sounds of the tree mending itself filled the air, and three pairs of eyes swivelled in Harry's direction. Harry waved his friends an invisible goodbye and jumped out of the way of a battering branch. Ducking and dodging, he managed to touch the knot on the trunk and paralyse the tree. He squeezed through the gap in the roots that marked the entrance to the passageway.

It was cool and dark underground, and Harry paused for a moment to gather his strength. It was here that his father had saved Snape's life. It was here that Snape had come to Harry's rescue, believing Sirius to be a murderer and a traitor. And it was here now that Harry came to pay his last respects to Snape. Before he crawled on, he took off his Invisibility Cloak. He owed it to Snape not to be hidden under James Potter's heirloom when he met him for the last time.

The old crate was where he had left it, beside the opening to the Shrieking Shack. Harry held on to it to steady himself. With his eyes closed, he turned to the entrance. When he opened his eyes again, he looked into an empty room. Snape's body was gone.

There was blood splattered everywhere, on the floor, the broken furniture, the walls. When Harry looked closer - and he couldn't help himself, he had to look, had to find out what had happened to Snape - he noticed the shape of a hand on the door frame to his right. Crimson footprints led into the hallway and up the crumbling staircase.

Upstairs, the bedroom door stood ajar. The rays of sunlight that fell through the gaps in the boarded window illuminated an odd tableau. There in the middle of a magnificent four-poster bed lay Severus Snape, pale as a corpse, with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest. He was surrounded by dozens of empty vials, glittering suns in a galaxy of dancing dust.

Harry crept into the room, unwilling to disturb the peaceful scene, but drawn like a compass needle to the North Pole. Snape's hands were ice cold, his cheeks frozen. Clambering onto the bed, Harry took one of Snape's hands in his. "Reparo," he whispered, and his throat constricted painfully. He blinked his eyes. No thoughts of sandwiches or Kreacher crossed his mind when he laid his head on the cushion next to Snape's. He fell asleep immediately.

* * *

"Potter. Can't I ever get rid of you? Not even in the afterlife?"

Harry surfaced slowly through layers and layers of sleep and opened his eyes to meet Snape's black stare. "You're alive?" he said, full of wonder.

"What is this? A quiz game? Are _you_ not dead, Potter?"

Harry shook his head. "Huh. ... No. Why? What?"

Snape gripped Harry's arm and squeezed it painfully.

"Ouch."

"It is true then. You're alive. Are you hiding from the Dark Lord? I should have known that you would botch it up."

"No, listen -"

"I'm too weak to Apparate, but we should leave immediately. This place isn't safe. There's not much I can do for you anymore. Nevertheless, I advise you to -"

Snape struggled to get up. Harry caught his arm. "Voldemort is dead."

"Don't say the Dark Lord's name, you fool."

"He's dead. There's no harm in saying his name anymore."

A fire kindled in the depths of Snape's eyes, giving a great contrast to the marble mask that was his face. "Don't joke with me," he said in a low voice.

"I'm not joking. Voldemort is dead. Dead as a herring."

"Thank Merlin." Closing his eyes, Snape stretched out on the bed once more.

* * *

The next time Harry woke, it was dark outside. The bedroom was illuminated by several candles, and no Snape was in sight. Yawning, Harry rubbed the sleep from his eyes and got up. Snape must have removed his glasses, everything was slightly blurred. Harry took them from the bedside table and grinned; they were as spotless as the day when an annoyed Hermione had cleaned them in a huff to make him 'see reason'. Picturing Snape taking care of him made something stir in his stomach that he didn't want to think about.

Harry's bladder was about to explode, and he was astonished to find a perfectly functional bathroom next door. The thought of an eleven-year-old Remus having to pee after changing back into his human form all alone in his monthly exile made him inexplicably sadder than the thought of him lying there in the Great Hall at Tonks' side. When Harry was done, an irresistible smell lured him downstairs. The bloodstains on the stairs were gone, and the door to the room with the passageway was closed.

He found Snape sitting hunched over a table in the adjacent room. A cauldron bubbling over a magic fire was the origin of the delicious aroma. Once again surrounded by empty vials, Snape looked less like a marble statue and more like his old self, albeit sick and even more sallow than usual.

"How do you feel?" Harry asked.

"Stir the cauldron," Snape said, coughing.

"It smells great," Harry said. "What is it, Strengthening Solution?"

Snape shook his head. He took a vial from the shelf behind him and downed it in one gulp. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his movements were awkward, jerky. "Chicken broth," he finally said.

"Oh." Concentrating on the bubbles that rose to the surface of the cauldron in an irregular pattern, Harry chased them with a stirring rod. He looked up when Snape's coughing became more intense. Snape was pointing in the direction of a cupboard where Harry found not only plates, bowls and cutlery, but also numerous packets of bread. Harry served them both soup and bread and sat down on the table opposite Snape.

The soup was as delicious as its smell. Harry, who had forgotten how hungry he was, dug in with a ravenous appetite. Only after finishing his second bowl, he noticed that Snape had stopped eating with his bowl more than half full. "I should take you to the infirmary," Harry said, "Madam Pomfrey can take better care of you."

Snape shook his head.

"Don't worry. I told Voldemort you were Dumbledore's man before I ... during our last duel. Everybody was there. Everybody knows. You're a hero now."

Snape's eyes widened for a short moment. He stood up and left the room, feeling his way carefully along the wall.

"Where are you going?" Harry asked and listened to Snape's heavy steps on the staircase.

After finishing Snape's bowl, Harry put the remaining broth under a Stasis Charm, doused the fire and cleaned up. He sat at the table for more than an hour, staring at a little knothole in the wooden surface.

Snape was lying on his side when Harry entered the bedroom later that night. There was only one empty vial on the bedside table, and Snape's forehead was warm and dry. Harry heard soft snores when he stretched out beside him. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

* * *

"Why are you still here?" Snape asked over breakfast, breaking bread into his soup.

Harry shrugged his shoulders. He had found a lump of cheddar in the cupboard and was making a cheese sandwich. "I wonder why nobody has come to look for us yet," he said.

"Why do you think that is?"

"Dunno. It seems odd."

"Do you think that the Dark Lord -"

"Voldemort."

"- that the Dark Lord left his headquarters without protection? Anyone thinking of the Shrieking Shack will find themselves heading to the Forbidden Forest, looking for mushrooms."

"Oh." Harry cut his sandwich in half. "So how could we - Ron, Hermione and I - get here then?"

"How dense can you be, Potter? You could get here because the Dark Lord wanted you here."

Harry was cutting his sandwich into slender strips. "Ron and Hermione are going to find us sooner or later," he said.

"I doubt it."

"You changed the wards?"

Snape slurped his soup.

The sandwich in front of Harry looked like a jigsaw puzzle that someone had shaken out of its box. "I wanted to thank you, I suppose," Harry said.

The slurping stopped.

"You know, all that time, I hated you. But now, now that I know that you always protected me and that you loved my moth-"

"Don't."

"I -"

"Don't play with your food, Potter."

Harry fumbled for his wand - the unwelcome heat of the Elder Wand against his arm - and cast a quick Reparo on the mutilated sandwich. He watched the small pieces of cheese and bread rearrange and mend themselves on his plate. When he looked up, he met Snape's eyes. "I owe you," Harry said and cut the sandwich in half again, offering it to Snape.

Snape took a bite and put it back. "This needs butter," he said, "and I need to rest."

Taking a bite from his own half - it didn't taste bad at all - Harry listened to Snape's familiar steps on the staircase. After a while, Harry mended the two halves again. Their bite marks - Snape's was smaller than Harry's - became one, a heart-shaped void.

* * *

Harry didn't find butter in the cupboard, but mayonnaise, tuna and tinned fruit, and he wondered if Voldemort had robbed a Muggle supermarket. Around lunchtime, he fixed Snape a cheese and tuna sandwich, a cup of tea and a bowl of pineapple and carried everything upstairs.

Standing at the boarded window, Harry tried to make out details outside, but all he could see through a gap between two planks was the overgrown garden. Not even the timber fence surrounding the Shack was visible under its green cover. Beyond, the world ended.

"Potter."

Harry snapped out of his reverie and turned around. Snape was sitting against the headboard, sipping pineapple juice from the bowl, the half finished sandwich and an empty teacup on the bed beside him.

"Do you want more tea?"

Snape nodded. "A napkin would have been nice," he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, "but I don't expect you to know anything about table manners."

"Don't see a table anywhere," Harry couldn't help saying. When he returned with the tea, Snape was downing the contents of another vial.

"Do you feel better?" Harry said.

"Do you think, Potter, now that you know of my feelings for your ... for Lily, that anything has changed between us? Do you think that we'll become _friends_?" Snape took the teacup from Harry, and his hand shook when he raised it to his lips.

"I don't know what to think," Harry said.

"Of course not."

"I wanted to give you something." Harry took the flask with Snape's memories out of his pocket. A silver mist, they swirled within their glass prison.

Snape made an odd little sound, something between a gasp and a cough. Slowly, he stretched a hand out and took the small bottle. "High time," he said, but his voice lacked the usual sarcasm.

Harry turned to leave then. Snape's command stopped him at the door. "Stay."

Reluctantly, Harry watched the memory threads return to their owner. They circled Snape's head - a silver aureole - before they penetrated his temples and his forehead. Snape had his eyes closed, and he looked peaceful. "Tell me about it," he said. "Tell me about your victory over the Dark Lord."

Snape pointed at his head where the last shimmering strand was about to disappear. "What happened after I gave you those?"

Harry climbed onto the bed next to Snape and began to speak. The words didn't come easily at first, the memories painful; some of them were strange and wonderful, too. Snape didn't interrupt him, not even when Harry described his walk through the forest, Lily at his side. Harry's speech became more fluent afterwards. When he had finished his tale, they sat in silence for a while. "So Dumbledore knew that your death wouldn't be permanent?" Snape finally asked.

"He could only guess, but as he said himself, his guesses have usually been good." Smiling, Harry remembered his last conversation with Dumbledore.

"Why didn't he tell me, the scheming old bastard?" Snape, who'd been watching Harry with avid interest, closed his eyes again. "He could've told me."

There was a strange quality in Snape's voice that made Harry's smile waver. "It wouldn't have made a difference if you knew," he said.

"It wouldn't have made a difference? You arrogant brat!" Snape's face was twisted and he balled his hands into fists.

For a moment, Harry thought that Snape was about to attack him. When nothing happened, Harry asked, "Why? What difference would it have made? You never even liked me."

"What difference?" Snape turned around and lunged at Harry, gripping his shoulders in a vice-like grip.

"What difference?" Snape repeated, shaking Harry so forcefully that his head slammed against the headboard.

"I could have died in peace," Snape said, suddenly very calm. His hands burned on Harry's shoulders. "I could have died knowing that my life wasn't a complete failure, that I did something right. I could have died knowing that I kept you alive."

"But you didn't die," Harry said. Snape's face was so very close now that Harry could see the pores on the tip of his nose. Snape had a slight stubble on his upper lip and chin, nearly invisible, and his thin lips were parted. He smelled of tea and pineapple.

"You didn't die." Snape's voice, low and rumbling, echoed Harry's words.

Harry had been kissed before, and while Cho's kisses had only been wet and sloppy, Ginny's birthday kiss had been blissful, better than Firewhisky or even treacle tart.

Snape's kiss was nothing like that. It was like a force of nature, an earthquake, a volcano erupting fire and molten stone. A part of Harry - the part that wasn't painfully hard and was making soft, keening noises while pressing up against Snape - wondered if that wasn't exactly what he had wished for ever since he found out about the Half-blood Prince's identity. Thoughts like that were forgotten the moment Snape straddled him, rubbing their clothed erections together.

Harry fumbled with the little buttons at Snape's collar, desperate to touch skin. The fabric tore under his clumsy fingers, and Harry caressed the revealed flesh that was warm and incredibly soft.

"No."

Harry hardly noticed that Snape had broken the kiss. He licked along Snape's jawbone, fascinated by the texture of the skin there. It was so rough in comparison to the softness of Snape's chest where his exploring hand had just found a pert nipple.

"No. Potter, stop." Snape pushed Harry's hand away and retreated to the other side of the bed, mending his robes with a silent Reparo.

Harry looked at his empty hands. His hard-on receded, and his eyes were full of tears. Blinking them away, he decided that they were born of hatred. "I was right, you never even liked me," he said, his voice as cold as he could make it. "You were in love with my mother."

Harry's words hung in the air for an eternity, reverberating from the walls again and again in silence. Harry sat stock still. At first he didn't notice the noise coming from Snape. Then he thought that Snape was crying, crying over his lost love with his face hidden behind his pulled-up knees. Only when Snape looked at him, Harry became aware of the fact that he was laughing.

A laughing Snape was a horrible sight. His face was distorted as if in pain, a frightful grimace that seemed to belong to a madman or to one of the gargoyles on top of the Astronomy Tower. Harry wanted to comfort Snape and take him into his arms. He wanted to slap him and shake him until the fit was over. Harry looked at his hands and hid them in his sleeves, the Elder Wand hot against his skin.

"I wasn't in love with Lily," Snape said when his laughing fit had ceased.

"Could've fooled me. The letter, the photo, your distress after the quarrel - did you fake all those memories?"

"I loved Lily. I love her still. She was my best friend, the only true friend I ever had; but I wasn't in love with her.

"Do you think I would've done _this_ -" Snape gestured at Harry and the rumpled bed "- if I'd been in love with her? Sweet Merlin."

"Are you sure you didn't do it _because_ you were in love with her?" Harry knelt over Snape and looked him right in the eye, the heat of the Elder Wand running through his arm.

"I should slap you in the face for that." Snape kissed him instead.

This time, Harry pushed Snape away. "Why did you want to look into my eyes when you thought you were dying? Wasn't it because you were seeing _her eyes_ in mine?"

"Idiot." Snape grabbed Harry's shoulders. Pulling him down, he smashed his lips on Harry's.

Tears of hatred running down his face, Harry wrestled free from Snape's grip and shouted, "Why did you throw my picture away?"

The Elder Wand slid down his arm and into his hand.

"Do you think I needed a reminder that you're so much younger - a child, the son of my peers?" Snape's lips found Harry's again, and Harry allowed the kiss. Hot sparks shot from the wand in Harry's hand and singed Snape's robes.

"Shit." Harry jumped away from Snape.

"Bloody thing. I have to get rid of it." Harry threw the Elder Wand on the floor and in horror watched it returning to his hand.

"I have to get out of here," Snape said and rubbed along the spot on his upper arm where the fabric of his robes was scorched.

They looked at each other. "Dumbledore's wand," Snape said just when Harry asked the most important question of his life:

"Can I come with you?"

* * *

Dumbledore smiled even in death, and the spectacles that were still sitting on his crooked nose - misted over in the cool night air that had found its way into the tomb with Snape and Harry - hid the fact that his eyes weren't twinkling anymore.

"He was a great man," Snape said.

"He was also a good man," Harry said, squeezing Snape's hand.

They stood in silence for a long time, side by side under Harry's Invisibility Cloak.

"He believed in love," Harry said and put the Elder Wand back where it belonged, in Dumbledore's hands. "He was probably the only wizard who could master the Death Stick without wreaking havoc."

With a flick of Snape's wand, wrappings enshrouded Dumbledore's thin figure once more. Harry laid a bunch of flowers on Dumbledore's chest where he knew that the wand was hidden. "Keep it safe until I die," he said.

Both men bowed their heads. "Rest in peace, Headmaster," they said in unison.

Outside, they raised their wands and sealed the tomb. "Albus Dumbledore might have believed in love," Snape said, still holding Harry's hand, "but it was your love that saved us from the Dark ... from Voldemort."

Harry pressed a kiss to Snape's cheek. "I know nothing about love," he said. "The only thing I know is that I'm confused. I don't understand what you tell me about the difference between your love for my mum and ... and other things."

Snape put an arm around Harry's shoulders and pulled him close. "You'll learn. I can promise you that."

Arm in arm, they walked to the front gate. It was open, and they slipped through before Harry noticed that they weren't alone. Half hidden behind the statue of a winged boar stood Professor McGonagall, talking to Kingsley Shacklebolt.

"... at least all student quarters are restored and habitable. Now if only I could find a way to get into the Headmaster's office. Nobody seems to know the password."

"We'll find a way, Minerva. Tomorrow. Sleep well."

"Good night."

Kingsley vanished with a soft plop, and McGonagall walked slowly through the gate. Harry looked at the illuminated castle, the only home he had ever known and the place where his friends were waiting.

"Do you want to go back?" Snape asked.

Harry shook his head. "No," he said.

Snape gripped Harry's arm and turned on the spot.

"Severus Snape," Harry called after McGonagall's retreating back. "The password is Severus Snape."

Pressed close together, they Disapparated.

* * *

The beginning.


End file.
